Clash Issue 79 The xx

After more than a year of side-projects, we meet the UK's most beloved minimal pop trio, The xx, as they rejoin for their second studio album.

We also meet Flying Lotus. As an artist and producer in a rich groove, his last album, ‘Cosmogramma’, set a popular benchmark, gathering reverential acclaim and gate-crashing the US Top 20 in the process. As a proud label boss, his Brainfeeder imprint continues to command a critical, almost cultish, respect; an esteemed byword for a world of celestial interludes, static samples, gloomy atmospherics and hijacked frequencies.